US Navy Recruit Training Command - Keel Yearbook (Great Lakes, IL)

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Y che! the I . q Cents tum mlhcxty f I' Green Y s lmgesi' mpre than ummm? es- qPP0inted h Wild hikted Y Pre '. Nu as Q lwo Udioinirill S113 fm' Q naval -.ntmqc ' GS q ' ming lhnl their :ur flezghcllel Igfllyvy had u .SLLA '. H1en.I .nm dedlcuted usti md Tuff 111 No : um-me urgency Q R3 Fl'-013 of gqpid 1 as L918 concluded they T xc been e'P0Ddetl to -I2 ll?-Ln The if-'W 'lic Il men tor serv. 553323 :cavity came to u 1 t r 1.4 ,N i ii. tt 'ptifftltt 'Il ffififw '.ff,'7'E15 1 complete standstill for a time, beginning in 1933. Al- though it was re-opened Iuly 29, 1935, the total popu- lation of Great Lakes was less than one thousand when President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed a national emergency on September 9, 1939. A period oi orderly growth began Iuly 26, 1940 and when the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, Great Lakes accommodated 14,000 men. America's entry into World War II touched oft a tremendous expansion program which was to add another thousand acres to the Station area and make it big enough to hold 100,000 men under crowded conditions. Ten thousand men were em- ployed in the construction program which by late 1942 had mushroomed Great Lakes to approximately its present size. More than a million men, or a third of the Blue- jackets in the wartime fleet, were trained at Great Lakes during the war, The present name, U. S. Naval Training Cen- ter, Great Lakes, Illinois, came with a change of status on March 28, 1944. Great Lakes became a group command, with four subordinate commands, of which one is the Recruit Training Command. The 9? +1 'rv : '- Mtn 1 izii 'i 45. 'ft others are Administrative and Service School com- mands and the Marine Barracks. Great Lakes was the home of the Navy's only Wave Recruit Training School until late in 1951. . ,....-,... .....Y.r HWY VW

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,, t , A , , L i v ' , i N , t I 'f t , nl' 1 1 dl 1 L 4 ! n-.1 J' n-4 1 r. :. From a modest beginning shortly after the turn of the century, U. S. Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, Ill., has grown to a capacity of more than 80,000 and become the Navy's largest training es- tablishment. It was in 1904 when a board appointed by Presi. dent Theodore Roosevelt selected two adjoining farms near Lake Bluff, Illinois, as a site for a naval training station. The site was presented as a gift of the people of nearby Chicago, acting thru their lVlerchant's Club. ' L After six years of construction, the Navy had a 172-acre station with a capacity of 1,500 men. It was commissioned Iuly l, 1911 and dedicated asia Station by President William Howard Taft in No- vember of that year. Under conditions of wartime urgency, Great Lakes has undergone two periods of rapid expan- sion. When the Armistice of 1918 concluded the Kaiser war, Great Lakes had been expanded to 1,200 acres and 45,000 men were in training. The Station had trained a quarter-million men for serv- ice in that war. Between wars, the station's activity came to a M EUO'iiE2EE5t'il'5 ZL:iFlsQfliFnr3Qo2s it-g H1 ri Tffwz--kg,-. I 9i!3,i'i5g JTJSTVELQ Qwifsstf

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Wave training is subsidiary to the larger Recruit Training Command and the Wave recruit receives training similar in many respects to that received by her Bluejacket brothers in another part of the Center. The Navy recruit, regardless of sex, receives basic indoctrination in the skills needed in the service and an overall picture of the Navy, its customs, traditions and history. Physical training, first aid, physical hygiene and related subjects CAMP DEWEY NERVE CENTER EVERYONE SPENDS A FEW DAYS IN CAMP BARRY EACH CAMP HAS ITS OWN RECREATION BUILDING 33, t,,g,:, -. '- ,,. H ur, ,W ,- - x ,.. X I ,